Nuggets from the Masters' Videos

[turtleback]

I know a number of us have been watching, to one extent or another the Masters final round replays.  I find that as I do, little factoids or thoughts will come up.  In the hope that I'm not the only one to experience this I thought I'd start this thread so we can share these things with each other.

I'll start with 2002.  I watched the front 9 of the leaders and was struck by a couple of things.

1) Retief Goosen had scored in the 60s the first three rounds and had an opportunity to be the first with all four.  As we know he didn't do it.  It makes me wonder, though, how many times a player has come to the 4th round with that chance.

2) Apropos of the ball-striking discussions, there was a graphic showing that in 1997 and 2001 Tiger lead the field in both driving distance and GIRs.  And he was leading in both again, at that point of the final 2002 round.  They also mentioned that he was 12th in putting, but I'm not sure what metric they were using.

3) Pretty power-packed leaderboard with Vijay, Ernie, Phil, Goosen, among others.  Of the 10 guys immediately behind Tiger, 9 were current (2002) or future major winners.  At one point the announcer said that 6 of the top ranked players in the world were on page 1 of the leaderboard.  The 6 guys immediately behind Tiger were all eventual MULTIPLE major winners, with a total of 19 major wins to date.

Edited April 16, 2018 by turtleback